From: lientam@buddhist.com 
To: hoasen-1@yahoogroups.com, vn-buddhism@yahoogroups.com, tubi@yahoogroups.com 
Subject: [hoasen-1] DO BUDDHISTS EAT MEAT?
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 16:05:35 -0500 (EST)

No thoughtful Buddhist would disagree with the claim that Buddhism in its various forms, has always taught non-violence. Indeed it could be said that Buddhist morality is no more than an expression of this principle within different contexts and relationships. But despite this agreement of principle, there is no corresponding agreement over practice with regard to our eating habits. As we shall see, this difficulty may be rooted in the Buddhist texts themselves. 

In a well known episode in the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, the aging Buddha is shown to eat some ‘bad pork’-which seems to result in his death. Does this not suggest that the Buddha himself ate meat? 
There is actually so much disagreement among scholars concerning the meaning of the termtranslated as pork’ that what the Buddha actually ate cannot really be established. In the corresponding Chinese sutra, the term is translated as a type of fungus. 

Nevertheless, it does seem-at least according to the Pali texts-that the Buddha and his followers did eat meat so long as certain conditions were met. These conditions were that a monk should not have seen, heard, nor have any reason to suspect, that the meat was from an animal killed specifically for him. If these three conditions were met then the meat was said to be ‘blameless’. 

There are some four references to the ‘blamelessness’ of eating meat-once in both the Majjhima and Anguttara Nikayas, and twice in the Vinaya. However, for a householder to have an animal killed in order to feed a monk was reckoned to result in great demerit. In the Sutta Nipata a previous Buddha, Kassapa, is admonished by a brahmin for eating ‘stinking meat’. Kassapa replies with a long list of unskilful mental states and declares that such are ‘stench’, not the eating of meat. There is also the notion from the Vinaya that meat and fish are ‘excellent food’ for those who are ill. Interestingly, in the Chinese ‘equivalents’ to the Majjhima and Anguttara Nikayas, the sutras dealing with the ‘blamelessness’ of eating meat are absent.  In contrast to these few canonical references to the conditions under which meat might be eaten, there is an overwhelming abundance of exhortations to be ‘ashamed of roughness, full of mercy, and dwell compassionate and kind to all creatures that have life’. The Buddha also teaches that we should refrain from harming plants and seeds, not to speak of sentient beings. Is there not, therefore, a tension in the texts themselves? Is it really possible to ‘dwell kind and compassionate to all living creatures’ and to eat their flesh knowing that it was taken in an act of violence? 

It can be argued that as the Buddha lived in a meat-eating, non-Buddhist society, he taught the monks simply to accept what was offered to them, given the conditions above, as a practice in even- mindedness. In so doing, the Buddha was simply going along with the standard practice of the shamanic community. But should not the situation change when that society has an increasing number of Buddhists within it?  The oldest extant written records which reflect the Buddha’s teaching-the Ashokan edicts-show the king to be very concerned, as a Buddhist, with the welfare not only of his human subjects, but also with that of animals. Hunting and fishing are prohibited in his kingdom, no animals are killed in his kitchens, and the killing of animals for food is restricted elsewhere in his kingdom. Indeed, he even reports the establishment of medical services for animals. Given that the dates of Ashoka’s reign- 268 to 232 BCE-are now well established, and the fact that many modern scholars have moved the Parinirvana of the Buddha some 80 to -20 years or so in our direction, the implication is that Ashoka’s reign was much closer to the time of the Buddha than was earlier supposed. Do not these inscriptions, therefore, provide reasonable evidence about the nature of early Buddhist practice within a growing Buddhist society? 

The real issue, however, is one of ethics and not of social mores or Vinaya rules (the vast majority of which have little or nothing to do with ethics, but are concerned with establishing the unity of a religious order): Is there an ethical link between the killing of an animal and the eating of its flesh?  
To say that eating an animal’s flesh has no ethical connection with the brutal act of killing it and the fear and terror experienced by it shows a thoroughgoing insensitivity to life, a poverty of imagination, and an incapacity to reason. Although one may not have killed the animal oneself or had someone else kill it for one, one is not freed from responsibility for the killing. A butcher or slaughterman kills an animal not for himself but for a market of consumers. If there were no market of meat-eaters there would be no point in butchering animals except for one’s own consumption. Therefore if one decides to eat meat one has also decided to become part of the market of meat consumers. And if one has become part of this market one is connected with the demand to which the butcher or slaughterman responds. 

There is a very definite relationship between the meat-eater and the brutal act of killing, between one’s desire to taste flesh and the actual pain and suffering undergone by the animals.  If one is trying to practise the teachings of the Buddha by becoming kinder and more compassionate to all creatures it is quite obvious that one relatively easy step to take is withdraw from the market for animal flesh.  Surely, in our age, no form of meat eating can be said to be entirely ‘blameless’. 

Within the Mahayana the situation is quite different. There are many sutras which clearly see the connection between meat-eating and the suffering of animals. In the Lankavatara a lengthy passage explains why one should not eat meat. Also certain Mahayanists follow the Brahmajala Sutra (not the Pali version) as their moral code, and this prohibits meat-eating. This code is followed in China by both monks and lay-people. Three years ago I stayed for a few days in a Ch’an monastery in Wu Tai Shan, the mountain region in China sacred to Manjushri, and was served, along with the monks, only vegetarian food.  Tibetan monks do not follow the Brahmajala Sutra but the Mulasarvastivadin Vinaya, which is much the same as its Theravadin counterpart. But their sutras are mainly Mahayana and, because they are followers of the compassionate Bodhisattva Ideal, one would expect Tibetan Buddhists and their European and American followers to practise vegetarianism. However, my own encounters suggest that there are many who do not. This would be understandable in the harsh, barren landscapes of Tibet, but not in London, Paris, or New York. Some years ago I asked a Tibetan lama why so many Tibetan Buddhists ate meat. He replied that it was a matter of what type of meditation practice one did. If one did a Mahayana practice such as the visualization of Avalokiteshvara or Tara then one should not eat meat as one had to remain ‘pure’. But if one performed a Tantric practice, such as visualizing one of the wrathful deities, then the power of the practice purifies one-regardless of one’s eating meat. I must stress that this exchange was conducted through a translator who may not have grasped the point of my question and, indeed, may have misrepresented the lama’s reply.
Nevertheless one must at least argue that the reason for refraining from eating meat is not to safeguard one’s own purity’ but to prevent the unnecessary suffering of animals. The former is more in the spirit of Hinduism, the latter that of Buddhism. 

Finally, what about meat eating as a part of Tantric ritual? The simple answer is that such acts as eating meat, drinking wine, having sexual intercourse with an outcaste, drinking menstrual blood, and eating excrement, were all ‘taboo’ acts. If eating meat does not go against a deeply rooted aspect of one’s conditioning, it is an empty act. Meat eating in this context presupposes that one is a strict vegetarian.  There are many more arguments as to why the compassionate teachings of the Buddha imply that one should consider becoming a vegetarian-if not a vegan, and for those interested in a much fuller statement of the case, Roshi Philip Kapleau’s excellent book, A Buddhist Case for Vegetarianism, is to be recommended.

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